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Conservation and Restoration

Combining academic knowledge and technical skill to preserve our cultural heritage

Molecular mysteries of art: how water affects historic oil paintings

Everyone knows that oil and water do not mix. But it turns out that water actually plays a very important role in the stability of oil paintings, such as those by Rembrandt or Vermeer. Water moves through the layers ...
NWO funding for advanced study of light-induced materials degradation

A multidisciplinary research team coordinated by Maarten van Bommel, professor of Conservation Science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), has been awarded 900,000 euros funding by the Dutch Research Council NWO ...
Michiel Vermaat wins Rijksmuseum Migelien Gerritzen thesis prize 2024

Michiel Vermaat has won the Rijksmuseum Migelien Gerritzen thesis prize 2024 with his master's thesis, entitled ‘Seeing Beyond the Surface: Investigating Methods of Visualising Consolidants in Wood Borer-Damaged ...
A sophisticated approach to watching paint dry

In a paper in Macromolecules, researchers at the University of Amsterdam’s Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences present detailed insights into the polymerization process of drying oils in paint. Using ...
New AHM Academic Staff Member: Jorien Duivenvoorden

Jorien Duivenvoorden has been appointed Assistant Professor of Conservation of Historic Interiors in a Socio-material Context at the University of Amsterdam. Her work centers around climate-induced material ...
How Rembrandt combined special pigments for golden details of The Night Watch

Chemists at the Rijksmuseum and the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have for the first time established how Rembrandt applied special arsenic sulfide pigments to create a ‘golden’ paint. Using sophisticated ...
NWO funding for research into the conservation of art objects

How can museums reduce energy consumption and widen indoor climate tolerances safely? How did black woollens quality standards in the 18th-century develop and change over time? With funding from the Dutch Science ...
Getty Foundation supports masterclass and publication on wax-resin lining

The UvA Conservation and Restoration Department is excited to announce that it will host a second edition of the masterclass The Dutch Method Unfolded on the wax-resin lining of paintings in January 2025. The Getty ...
Would you like to update? The problem with storing digital art

Start up a computer that you haven't used in a while and there's a good chance you'll have to run an endless series of updates before you get it working. What about digital art? How do you ensure that that the art ...
ConNext 2024

Next week we will kick of the fourth edition of the online student conference ConNext: ConNext 2024. For four consecutive weeks students from conservation training programmes around Europe will present their ...

Exploring the Materiality of Powdered Colors

25 Mar - 3 Apr 2025

Curators, conservators and conservation scientists are invited to apply to this traveling seminar devoted to the examination, historic manufacture and scientific study of pastels.